Wendy McClure

Author and Professional Obsessive.

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Archives for June 2006

Change of address

June 30, 2006 by Wendy

I keep meaning to tell you I moved. WE MOVED. On Sunday the Starving Artists came and got my stuff and put it in the truck. They would have put Chris’s stuff in the truck had there been enough room, but apparently I have an astonishing amount of stuff. I mean, I don’t hoard used tinfoil or collect Franklin Mint chess sets, but still all my things could fill an eighteen-foot truck. So they unloaded the truck here at the new place and then got Chris’s things and brought them up the three flights. It took about seven hours.
I’ll write more later. I’m still too tired to think straight. See Flickr for more!

Filed Under: Chicago, personal

Whisper while you work

June 8, 2006 by Wendy

Of course I don’t know what kind of voice you hear in your head when you read these entries of mine, but for this particular entry, it needs to sound something like Demi Moore’s voice, a little raspy, since I’m getting over a cold. People always say, oh, but that sounds sexy! And maybe it does, if you’re a few feet away, but when it’s right between your own ears it sounds complicated and fuzzy, like the tuner knob on your radio is just a little off. I don’t enjoy it. This weekend it was much worse, and sometimes I had to whisper, which would have been fine if I’d happened to see dead people, or else wanted to say things like “not our class, darling,” but for everyday life it did NOT suffice. And I know it’s been only a week since it started, but my morning cough has become depressingly second-nature, like it’s something I do to ward off predators.

But I’m better, and I almost sound like myself again, and tomorrow Chris and I will be driving to Michigan, because there is nothing like ditching two apartments full of half-packed boxes for a short road trip. Maybe we will go to Cereal City and mess with people in trademarked-character costumes. Who knows?

I am counting the days until the move, when my morning commute will no longer include having to stare at this billboard, with its unsettlingly straightforward headline (it’s a Sean Paul lyric; it’s a product slogan; it’s both!), and the grim specter of Sean Paul’s head, which is huge enough to be in a zone all its own, hence the slogan (and the song). Every day I sit in traffic and consider the Zone of Sean Paul’s Head. Clearly it’s a zone in which one can legally have a first name as a last name. I suppose there are worse zones (i.e., construction, demilitarized, Dottie’s Weight Loss), but I can’t wait until I don’t have to look at this dude’s great big crunk face at 8:35 every morning.

You may have read over at Jen’s blog about how our heads were in the zone Saturday night after our event (though I am proud to say Smirnoff Ice was NOT involved one bit, and it was a fine time indeed. And yes, we had sashimi at the Four Seasons, and yes, it was a very bad idea. Because (and Jen is too kind to mention this), not long after I took a bite it occurred to me that the contents of my stomach were wanting very much to be in the same zone as my head, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. So I had to excuse myself, though I didn’t tell Jen what I had done until she confessed she needed to go home to do the same thing. We ladies of the Penguin imprints, we sure do* it up!

*and by “do,” I mean “throw.”

Filed Under: Chicago, personal, popcult

What I read one summer

June 8, 2006 by Wendy

I contributed a very short essay for Coudal Partners’ annnual Field-Tested Books feature, where I wrote about my experience reading The Incognito Lounge in 1992. (The book is back in print now.)

Filed Under: General

Some Wendy for your weekend

June 2, 2006 by Wendy

Tonight I will likely be drinking at May Fest. Additionally, Chris and I will surely be hitting the game booths there and trying to win some traditional German cardboard -framed-mirrors- with-the- Playboy-logo- on-them. We need to decorate this new apartment, you know.

Tomorrow, I’ll be at the Printer’s Row Book Fair, where I’m doing a joint event with Jen Lancaster at 4:00 pm at the Heartland Stage. (Which is where you’ll be if you’re going to see Augusten Burroughs at 2:30, so kindly stick around.) I believe Jen and I will be in “conversation,” answering questions about how we made our weblogs into books, and also discussing this book we’re totally going to write together, I’m Not Bitter Is the New Black Me.

And if you’re going to be at the fair but can’t catch me on Saturday, or don’t want to wait in the autograph line, you can stop by The Book Cellar booth on Polk Street, because I signed a bunch of copies of both my books, and Suzy and Carolyn will be selling them there.

On Sunday, you can read my latest True-Life Tale in the NY Times Magazine. (I mean, you can read it online now, but it’s in the Sunday paper.) You do not even know how excited I am that a picture of freaky glam-era Brian Eno is in the Sunday Times magazine. I know, it’s not like people tend to know him on sight and for just a fleeting moment it’s hard not think that’s a drawing of Eliza Dushku. But still!

(If you’re wondering what that Eno song sounds like, you can listen to brief samples here and here and here. You will find that it sounds quite lovely when played on your office computer in twenty-second intervals. It sounds different when played in a dive bar in sixty-one-minute intervals.)

In the meantime, I’ll continue to pack and go through the crap in my apartment. I am never buying anything ever again.

Filed Under: Chicago, promo

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The Wilder Life on Flickr

Recent Press and Links

  • Essay: A Little House Adulthood For the American Masters documentary on Laura Ingalls Wilder, I contributed a piece to the PBS website about revisiting the Little House books.
  • Essay: The Christmas Tape (At Longreads.com) How an old audio tape of holiday music became a record of family history, unspoken rituals, and grief.
  • Q & A With Wendy McClure Publishers Weekly interview about editing, Wanderville and more.

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Where else to find Wendy

  • Candyboots Home of the Weight Watcher recipe cards
  • Malcolm Jameson Site (in progress) about my great-grandfather, a Golden Age sci-fi writer.
  • That Side of the Family My semi-secret family history blog
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